{"id":5918,"date":"2011-12-29T17:42:33","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T22:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=5918"},"modified":"2011-12-29T17:42:33","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T22:42:33","slug":"a-judicial-about-face-grudging-but-rare-in-a-bias-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=5918","title":{"rendered":"“A Judicial About-Face, Grudging but Rare, In a Bias Case”"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s the New York Times<\/em> headline for an Adam Liptak Sidebar (the name of his legal column) and I used it because it’s a slamming head and says so much about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, Georgia.<\/p>\n

There are federal courts that civil rights lawyers wince over, and the 11th Circuit, southern to its core, is one of them. Here they overturned a jury verdict (very bad form for an appeals court, to suppress a jury decision) in the lower court, that awarded $1.4 million in an employment discrimination lawsuit against Tyson Foods. (Don’t you get the feeling that Tyson Foods must be the only<\/em> employer in the entire south? It does seem that any time something awful happens to minority employees in the south, it happens in a Tyson Foods plant.)<\/p>\n

Here was the case, as summarized by Liptak: “…a white manager at a Tyson chicken plant in Gadsden, Ala., called adult black men working there ‘boy.'”<\/p>\n

One employee, Anthony Ash, testified that “being in the south, and everybody know being in the South, a white man says ‘boy’ to a black man, that’s an offensive word.”<\/p>\n

“You might as well use the N-word if you are going to say that,” Mr. Ash added.<\/p>\n

Here’s what the Appeals Court said in overturning that verdict (brace yourself, because you’re going to go ballistic): “‘The usages were conversational’ and ‘nonracial in context,’ the majority wrote…”<\/p>\n

A brief filed by eleven civil rights leaders, one of them the first black federal judge in Alabama’s history, embarrassed the court into a highly unusual, if sulky and bitter, reversal.<\/p>\n

Read the whole article.<\/a> It’s not long but it tells you everything you need to, but don’t want to, know about the deep fissure in this country over race.<\/p>\n

It’s an unpleasant reminder that whenever I traveled in the south, I was acutely aware that those people are still fighting the Civil War and are still furious that they lost.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s the New York Times headline for an Adam Liptak Sidebar (the name of his legal column) and I used it because it’s a slamming head and says so much about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[337],"tags":[161,60,436,41,34],"class_list":["post-5918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","tag-civil-rights-lawsuits","tag-employment-lawsuits","tag-law-and-the-courts","tag-legal-causes-of-action","tag-situations-demanding-lawsuits"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t